On Tue, Dec 04, 2001 at 07:58:46PM +0000, Nick Phillips wrote:
> I've always been under the impression that in the absence of any explicit
> indication to the contrary, those mentioned in this section should be the
> authors of the program or package in question rather than the authors of
> the manpage.
>
> There seem to be quite a few cases of packages in Debian where this section
> is used in such a way that the (mistaken) impression that the persons listed
> deserve credit for the software in question rather than "just" the manpage.
When I write a man page for a piece of software I wasn't involved in
writing, I do put my name in the AUTHOR section, but in the form "This
manual page was written by Colin Watson <cjwatson@debian.org> for the
Debian system", or thereabouts. I usually (i.e. when I remember) also
put the name of the author of the software there before my own.
> I would propose such an amendment myself, were I actually a Debian
> Developer.
I agree with Mark Brown that a policy amendment seems unnecessary for
this. I imagine most people would agree that inaccurate credit is a bug.
--
Colin Watson [cjwatson@flatline.org.uk]